Doing strange things in the name of art

What I read

Finished Tam Lin.

Robert B Parker, The Professional (Spenser, #38) (2009), which there is some evidence I read at some time, but having re-read, am not really surprised it had faded, this is very much from the late period, phoning-it-in.

Then discovered on my shelves, Robert B Parker, Hugger Mugger (Spenser, #27) (2000), of which I had similarly no recollection, though it was a bit better than the foregoing even if one agrees with Spenser that he has wandered into Tennessee Williams-world.

Then Simon Brett, Major Bricket and the Body in the Bell Tower (2026) - I rather liked the first Major Bricket mystery - Brett is someone whose various series strike very unevenly for me - this was not bad but not quite as good? (None of them are ever up to Charles Paris in his prime, if prime one can call it.)

On the go

Started re-read Points of Departure: Liavek Stories (the ones by Patricia Wrede and Pamela Dean, this collection published 2015), but as it is ebook and everything else I am reading is hardcopy, is being kept for travel reading at present.

Am a fair way through Hallie Rubenhold, Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen (2025), in that Crippen has gone to his reward - WOT a sleaze, as American quack and conman don't really think he can be assimilated to any notion of Orwell's 'Classic English Murder', which honestly suggests that Mr Blair didn't actually know much about the subject.

Discover that not only, as I knew, did the actual murder take place not far from here (street is now council flats so not much of a site for Murder Tourism), but that post-trial Ethel le Neve (so not a sweet innocent victim) for some while resided a short walk away. Have not yet determined whether there is a plaque.

Up next

Probably Janice Hallett, The Silent Appeal (2026).

New Literary Review has arrived.

I am not really sure that the examples are comparable:

Musicians learn by playing old songs.
Chefs learn by cooking classic dishes.
A great song teaches you harmony. A classic recipe teaches you flavor.

The Lost Art of Copywork:

For writers, we have copywork.
It's simple: you copy great novels, word for word, for 30 minutes a day.
As you do this, you'll absorb the rhythms, sentence structures, and storytelling patterns of great fiction.
This is the best way to learn to write a novel.

I remember something similar yonks and yonks ago - maybe pre-computer days - about How To Write A Book: by taking several books in genre you wanted to write (at least, I think that was a proviso, doing random selection would have been interestingly surrealist), take coloured markers and mark (I think it was): descriptive passages, action scenes, and dialogue - and copy alternately from the chosen books into your own text.

(Possibly comes out surreal anyway?)

This is like AI before AI, hmmmm?

Massively Point Thahr Misst. Because the writers invoked by copywork scamster did not, I bet, straight up copy whoever they were riffing off. They were inspired by, influenced by, they did not sit down and painstakingly transcribe work by another author maybe changing the setting from Simla to San Francisco or whatever.

They had osmosed, perhaps, what they needed to get their pens moving.

Also this sounds an immensely dreary process?

(Am vaguely reminded of a hoohah some years ago about popular writers of - was it romantasy or was it before romantasy became A Thing - who were churning out works on Kindle pretty much by populating templates.)